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Email a FriendPosted by Pat on Friday, May 13, 2011 11:09 AM (EDT):
That’s a great story! It left me smiling! Thanks for sharing!
My Blessed JP2 Story
Unforgettable
by Daria Sockey in Faith on Tuesday, May 24, 2011 9:39 PM
Everyone else had a better story lined up for the beatification. But now that the hoopla is starting to die down, I’ll tell mine.
October 2, 1979, 12:00 PM:
Pope John Paul II was in the United States for a weeklong tour. I was a student teacher at a Cheshire, Connecticut school for developmentally disabled children. A call came in to the school office from my boyfriend, Bill, who worked in New York.
I hurried down the hall thinking up a nice but firm way to tell him never to call me during the school day: it could reflect badly in my student teaching evaluation if this sort of thing happened again.
But all that was forgotten as I picked up the phone. “Sweetheart — someone came by the office with two extra tickets to the Pope’s Mass tonight at Yankee stadium. Can you make it? How soon could you get here? We’d have to be in the city by 6:00 PM.
I put down the phone and raced back to my supervisor, sputtering out my opportunity, and my problem.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she said.”Get going. Out! Out! We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Off I raced to my car. To my house. Explained it all to my parents, then drove to Bill’s apartment in Pelham. We proceeded in his car to the Bronx, and managed to find a decent parking space within a few blocks of Yankee stadium. We located our second tier seats and waited along with 50,000+ others.
When the Pope rode into the stadium, we rose as one, cheered, waved, jumped up and down, cried, laughed. (I am an ethnic Pole, and thus had reason to be even more excited that the average devout American Catholic.)
We settled down as Mass began. After more than 30 years, I honestly can’t say I recall lots of details about the Mass, except for the long time Bl. John Paul elevated the large Host at the consecration. And the sound of his voice, so strong and clear in the youth of his papacy.
But my memory of what happened after the Mass is very clear.
The Holy Father got into the Popemobile and then rode around the stadium, as we again waved and cheered. At this point, lots of people started leaving to get a jump on an anticipated exit jam, so Bill and I moved down closer to the first row of seats.
There, we saw that the Pope has decided to ride once more around the perimeter. This time, as he passed we got a much closer view of him. It seemed, for a brief second, that he looked right at me.
Then he was gone.
My papal encounter may not sound very extraordinary. I was one of millions of Americans who by the end of that week could sport a button or t-shirt that said “I got a Peek at the Pope.”
But as the Popemobile disappeared, my boyfriend had one more surprise in store for me.
There, in Yankee stadium, Bill asked me to marry him. And I accepted. I later joked that Bill had taken advantage of my exhilirated emotional state, catching me when I could not possibly have been thinking clearly.
One thing was certain. Bill had certainly staged an unforgettable marriage proposal. No soft music and candlelight dinner for us. Instead, a concrete sports venue, a noisy crowd, and the dust kicked up by the Popemobile witnessed my leap into a vocation.
“Be not afraid,” the Holy Father had just been telling us. I took him at his word.
—Faith & Family senior writer Daria Sockey blogs at Coffee and Canticles.
Comments
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Nice proposal!! 
My husband and I were JP2 groupies too—showing up anywhere that we could catch a glimpse! And I didn’t realize that you were ever in Cheshire!??! Are you a Cheshire girl too?
Posted by Daria Sockey on Friday, May 13, 2011 4:42 PM (EDT):
I lived in Hamden from 1977 thru April 1980, at which point I got married. St. Stanislaus church, New Haven—the most gorgeous church and worth a visit if you’ve never been there. So I must have left before any of you arrived, I’m thinkin’.
Posted by Maryan VW on Friday, May 13, 2011 5:22 PM (EDT):
A little bit overlap. My mom is almost a lifetime Cheshire resident. For two years after marrying, she and my Dad lived in Ansonia. But then back to Cheshire when I was 2. So I lived in Cheshire from 1972 - until I left after college. So I was ten when you left in 1980. (Robyn was just arriving on the scene). And I went to high school in Hamden. But I’ve never been to St. Stanislaus’—we usually just go to St. Mary’s in New Haven, so I’ll have to check it out the next time we’re up!
Posted by Leticia Velasquez on Friday, May 13, 2011 5:43 PM (EDT):
You needed no persuading that he was the man for you after THAT experience!
Posted by Betsy on Saturday, May 14, 2011 7:43 AM (EDT):
In 1987, I was already married and pregnant with our first. We were at the Pope’s Mass in Candlestick Park. When he blessed the crowd, I lifted my shirt a little to get the blessing right on my belly! Now she is 23 and the perfect child, of course!
Posted by Rachel Navarro on Tuesday, May 24, 2011 4:07 PM (EDT):
What a beautiful story!!! In 2002, I went with a small group from my parish to World Youth Day in Toronto, Canada. We got to the site where JPII would be driving through the crowd very early in the day to get a spot near his path. When he arrived at the place we all began chanting, “JP 2, WE LOVE YOU” and “Giovanni Paulo!!” clap clap clap-clap-clap. The energy was amazing. When he drove past us, within 10 feet of us, maybe less, in the midst of the chanting and cheering, you could feel his holiness as he passed by, pressing into the crowd like a quiet bubble. I still treasure the picture my dad took of me shortly after, with tears streaming down my face because it recalls the emotion and feeling of the moment. I knew then that the man was a saint.
Posted by Bob Holland on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 9:28 PM (EDT):
Here is a link to an audio from a spiritual group which is getting a lot of attention right now, they say that Humanity needs to know the truth. I really liked this part and felt special energies like never before : And so it was that 6 years ago, just days before his mentor John Paul II’s death in April, 2005, during the Palm Sunday Mass, then Cardinal Ratzinger was prominently waiving olive branches instead of palm leaves, in order to meet the qualifications of the 111th and last elected pope in St. Malachy’s Prophecies, who is described as “The Glory of the Olive”.
Posted by Susan DiParisi on Saturday, May 28, 2011 3:51 AM (EDT):
What a wonderful memory for the two of you to begin your marriage together. JP2 played a very significant role in bringing my husband, Ryan, and me together, also. We were just friends and carpooled to a book discussion of Karol Wojtyla’s “Love and Responsibility” in Summit, New Jersey, with a small group in a church. As the discussion became deeper, our car discussions also got deeper. Suddenly, we were discussing pretty intimate topics we hadn’t ever shared with another human being with each other. After about 6 months we found ourselves in love, engaged and attending Precana classes in New York City.
Fast-forward through the December 4, 2004 wedding and onto our honeymoon, we flew away to Italy and the Vatican on Christmas Night. It was there that we were honored to be in the Papal Audience, in the Sposi Novelli section as one of twenty-five couples. I will never forget the excitement, the thrill of being in the highly energized crowd of on-fire Catholics from around the world. Everyone present had something in common, they genuinely loved Pope John Paul II. It was absolutely awesome when it was finally our turn to kneel before him, kiss his ring (his hands were enormous!) and thank him for bringing us together through his prophetic writing, “Love and Reponsibily.”
Ryan and I will always feel especially blessed to have received a marriage blessing from the Saint, JP2, himself. He passed away only three months after that momentous day in our marriage history. We were deeply saddened to know that he was gone, but extremely grateful that we were able to meet the wise and holy man who brought us together. He was, and continues to be, our matchmaker! We have an enlarged, framed picture of the three of us on that unforgettable day hanging in our living room. It is the first thing that people usually notice when they enter our house. Even our non-Catholic friends are amazed that we have a picture taken with someone of such divinity!
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